Restrictions
by goldenspecter
Summary: The characters in DP know they existed for more than just to tell some tale about a half dead boy. They know that their voices aren't their own, that they are just a bunch of shapes and 2D things animated into existence. However, everyone is restricted by a limited set of phrases or motions and it's a torturous hell being trapped in a body where you can't freely express how you fee
1. Animated Hells and Animals

**Like _Roomates and Adoption,_ I wrote this during 2017 CampNano and decided that now was as good as time as any to post this fice. **

**Full Summary:The characters in DP know they existed for more than just to tell some tale about a half dead boy. They know that their voices aren't their own, that they are just a bunch of shapes and 2d things animated into existence. However, everyone is restricted by a limited set of phrases or motions and it's a torturous hell being trapped in a body where you can't freely express how you feel in an animated hell.**

 **Based off of the song "Build Up Our Machine" by DAGames**

* * *

1\. Animated Hells and Animals

* * *

Danny knows he's neither just a creepy little boy with creepy little powers or a ghost trying to fit in with humans like Spectra says-he also knows that she was devastated having to _say_ it to him; Danny hopes she knows he doesn't hold that against her, it wasn't her fault, it never was. He's more than that, always has and always will be. Danny glances upwards at Casper High, unprepared to enter the colorful hell. He's grown detached from Dash repeatedly slamming him in lockers and he barely bats an eye when Lancer gives him a detention. Nothing that happens at Casper High fazes him anymore; in fact when you go to such a place everyday, nothing ordinary, nothing extraordinary surprises Danny.

Unless, it involved the script. That's the only thing that can spark a reaction out of him. Tucker and Sam trail behind him, as he rambles on using the same old pre recorded phrases Kaufman left behind combined with limited motion to express how he truly feels. Sam and Tucker uses the same old lines their voice actors left them along with the trite motions their animators animated for them. He opens his locker, thank goodness the animators and writers decided to script him doing that, Danny has no clue how he would have survived being a ninth grader forever if he couldn't do that.

Tucker and Sam continued trailing behind him to the door of Lancer's class. He looked behind him and gave the two an odd stare and rose an eyebrow.

 __"Now here's an interesting predicament._ " He wanted to say ,and it was only then Tucker and Sam realized the problem: none of them could enter the room because they were never scripted to walk into a class like normal teenagers. Apparently, the production team thought that being crime fighting teens, saving the citizens from ghosts, who needs to walk into a classroom like a regular person when you just fly in a classroom or kick down doors like some badass spy in a overly cliche movie? Yea, the team were idiots. Mr. Lancer was already in the classroom teaching the class a book they've heard nearly a thousand times-but it's the only way he can teach, it's not Mr. Lancer's fault he wasn't scripted to teach anything else.

The door won't magically open itself either. So there was that.

A few students pass by, whispering nonsense to each other. It must be wonderful to say whatever you want, the trio thinks bitterly. To have the animators not care about you, and not have scripted lines. Yet that is neither here nor there and they have to get over the bitterness that continually salts their wounds. Danny growls from both his bitterness and his frustration at the production team, grabs Sam and Tucker by their wrists, fly outside the school and through the windows leading to Mr. Lancer's classroom, turned intangible and sat in their seats. Mr. Lancer is still teaching, no one else turns around to acknowledge the trio. Everyone knows the jigs up, everyone knows his secret. It's been out since April 3rd, 2004 when Mystery Meat aired.

"Chronic tardiness." Mr. Lancer barked out as he wrote on the chalkboard. "Detention."

Danny doesn't respond. He's too used to it and his animations didn't seem to fit how he actually felt. Sighing, he rests his head on his desk and falls asleep because the animators decided that was the only thing he could do in a classroom.

Spectra wasn't wrong calling him a "creepy little boy or a ghost trying to fit in with humans" but she missed something. He didn't blame her for missing it, emotions were running high and all that jazz. She just failed to acknowledge that their entire existence was made possible by animators animating them in a colorful hell, writers writing their lines, Butch creating them, and Nickelodeon greenlighting their existence. Billionfold Studios produced them and then they were distributed by the Canadian animation company known as Nelvana. Badaboom badabing, suddenly they're broadcasted across millions of television screens.

They existed to entertain children. But the children are gone, Nick cut them off. Now they all exist on an infinite loop to tell some tale about a half dead boy in a hell made possible by Butch and Nickelodeon.

So it goes.

* * *

Valerie Gray appears in Parental Bonding. It's not for long and she doesn't say much. Despite the fact she has very few lines to recite, Val can't forget the elation she had when Tucker asked her to the dance nor the crushing disappointment when she got dumped for _Mason_.

But that grudge is gone, for the most part.

She appears in Shades of Gray and she knows three things:

One, at first she was rich. Pretty purple dress worth five hundred and seventy nine dollars, and worth "every single one of my Daddy's pennies."

Two, then she become poor. Riches to rags. _That_ type of thing.

Three, she was kind of a bitch throughout that whole episode. Slightly, if she had to say so herself( but alas she could not since the writers never scripted it. Although, she had _sufficient_ reason to act like the bitch she was...in the second half of the episode. Besides, it wasn't _her_ fault she acted the way she did. It was the writers' fault. They didn't handle her characterization properly and it was her creator's fault for allowing her to be portrayed in...that way. It wasn't _her_ fault.

Not a single bit.

That was what she told herself to feel better, to get through the infinite days in the animated Amity Park, to simply exist.

Valerie does wonder about Cujo. It was common knowledge to every Amity citizen that Cujo came from the Fentons' Ghost Portal yet no one really knew where he came from…

Partially, no one really knew where he came from. There was the short form answer: Butch and Nickelodeon.

That was the simple answer.

Then there was the long form answer and _**that**_ was what Valerie wanted to know. Why was Cujo even at Axiom Labs? What were they doing with the dogs at the lab? When did they **die?** What had happened for Cujo to die? And when he did come back, why did he have to come back and of all things, he caused destruction and havoc for a simple plushie?

She tries to piece together what she knows but in the end, there are no viable answers that satisfies her curiosity. Perhaps it was best if she to her father and asked him herself. Hopping on her hoverboard, she flies towards Axiom Labs(or was it Vladco? She can't really remember; too much change too quickly has fucked her over several times) and stifles her surprise when the colorful gradient of rosy oranges, red and pinks suddenly faded into a cool purple.

Valerie forgot how time, essentially, was a mere illusion.

Seeing her father stand outside Axiom Labs, she flew down in front of her father, summoning her regular clothes once again. Stepping off her hoverboard, Valerie hugged her father tightly.

"Hi Daddy."

Damon Gray tilts his head in confusion, he's never seen his daughter at his place of work except for Flirting With Disaster, so why was she here now? "What are you doing here Valerie?"

Valerie flung her hands at her hips, her cheeks flushing up in frustration as she tried to mangle her scripted lines and animations so that she could accurately convey her true intentions. Seconds later, she deflated, eyes closing in a pained matter before grinding her teeth, "Ghost dog."

"Ghost dog?" He repeated, and he can't help the blinding rage that marred his voice. But then he realizes, that his daughter wanted to know where Cujo came from. Then with a heavy sigh, he rested his hand in his hair, "Smelly security dogs are a thing of a past." Damon said quietly.

A beat of silence hangs over them.

"Maybe I'll just rest...for a second." Valerie whispered. It wasn't the best line she could have used, but it was the only line she could think of at the moment. Stepping back from her father, she summoned her suit and hoverboard, a bright pink light wrapping around her body until she was outfitted in her Red Huntress suit and flew off.

She needed to think.

* * *

"One time when I was five," Danny clasped his hands together, a dreamy look taking over. "I really wanted a puppy, but my parents-"

But his parents _what?_ was the question that remained unanswered. Danny supposed the reason he never had a puppy was that his parents would have accidentally splashed ectoplasm all over the innocent thing, mutating it beyond repair. However, he was fourteen now and he had a puppy...kinda. Cujo, the 'puppy' in question also had the ability to transform from an cute, adorable, innocent puppy to an menacing, murderous, killer adult as quickly as half as a second. The puppy thing was kinda questionable.

One time when he was still in development, before he was Danny Phantom, before he had ghost powers, he had Spooky. There was a world that Butch had, where Danny never had a ghost half but instead of being half-ghost, he had Spooky as his companion. He liked Spooky, he couldn't wait to hit the big screens to interact with Spooky. But just as quickly as Danny became enamored with Spooky, Butch just as quickly scrapped the idea of him riding around on an awesome motorcycle and the snowy owl being his companion.

The reason his creator had to snatch Spooky away from Danny?

Harry soddin' Potter.

Copyright issues, everyone claimed. It wasn't a good idea to have two supernatural teens to have snowy owls out on the creative market. So Harry got to keep Hedwig because he had been around longer, while Danny had to have Spooky taken away. Harry Potter won, Danny Fenton lost, simple as that right?

He was Danny Fenton, for god's sakes! Nothing was ever easy. What had made the loss hurt even more was the critical acclaim Hedwig had, if Rowling had procrastinated on writing her novels then that could have been him and Spooky, soaking in success.

But the thing that enraged Danny was that Butch never alluded to Spooky not once throughout the entire series. He had room to allude to _Nightmare On Elm Street_ or elements from _Marvel_ but he couldn't squeeze in Spooky on a random poster? He couldn't have done anything to preserve Spooky's existence, to at least commemorate his memory?

Apparently not. Because not once had Spooky been mentioned.

"I really wanted a puppy."

Danny doesn't want a puppy, he wanted Spooky.


	2. Voice Actors

II. Voice Actors

* * *

" _Ember, you will remember_

 _Ember, one thing remains_

 _Oh, Ember, so warm and tender_

 _You will rem-"_

The chord instantly sours, and Ember stops strumming her guitar, setting it down on the empty stage of the concert hall. She wonders how the chords of her only song, sounded so right and _rare_ , now sounded so dry and acrid that merely playing the chords made her grimace.

Speaking of right and rare…

Ember wondered what it would be like to play music from _RENT._ Her fingertips thrummed fervently, practically drooling as she imagined what it would be like to play such intense, passionate music from such an equally intense and passionate musical. Her, enthusiastically picking, strumming the dynamic and energetic chords to emotionally vivacious music with her _singing_ with such emotion that she never had when she sang Remember. The very idea of it all made her feel powerful...Except she was not. Not at all. There was no possible way if she could be powerful if her source of power relied on fucking _chanting._ People chanting her name made her powerful, the lack of chanting rendered her powerless. The idea was asinine and made no real sense to Ember. She was supposed to be, _**scripted**_ to be a villain. How, in the name of logic, was she supposed to be a 'good' villain if both the rise to such power and downfall was chanting? She wondered what exactly the writers, producers and _**Butch Hartman,**_ of all people actually think this was a good idea.

Ember could understand if chanting was used as a sort of, quote-unquote "power up." For example, Desiree was a powerful genie of her own right, whose power was _increased_ when other people made wishes. So why did the team not consider this when designing her character?

' _Oh yeah,'_ Ember thought in exasperation, ' _They were idiots...kinda.'_ She tacked on with an distasteful scowl, her makeup automatically running down her face and red blotches marring her face. Her electric blue hair began to fizzle out.

"That is...really uncool." She said aloud, forcing herself to calm herself down and merely seconds later, her makeup had fixed itself and Ember's hair returned itself to its normal fiery blaze.

Looking out at the empty concert hall, Ember vividly remembers one of her very first lines when she was scripted in this hellhole. ' _That's because I fill a void in your empty lives!'_ No, she doesn't. She can't fill any of the voids in anyone's empty life in this animated cage. Not with the limited number of lines the script writers gave her. She absolutely refused to think about the fact that her and Spectra share an actor. Ember wants more lines but she's not going that far to do so.

 _"I should have gone with the asparagus."_

She heard Timmy again.

Picking her guitar off the ground, she slung the strap around her neck and allowed the guitar to fall. Ember tightly held the neck of her guitar, her fingers ghosting over the fingerboard while her left hand turned the dial from the music icon to the skull icon and then abruptly strummed the strings, forming a discordant chord that was just as sour as she was right now. She received no satisfaction from the blast destroying a sizeable section of the concert hall.

She _**hated**_ Timmy Turner. Hated how he had more scripted, _engaging_ lines. Hated how he had more expressive animations then she ever would. Timothy "Timmy" Tiberius Turner could _hug_ his parents, his friends, his _infernal_ fairy godparents. Timmy Turner had the ability to say "I love you!" But Ember McLain, a ghostly teenaged failure of a rockstar couldn't even hug her friends or say "I love you" to her boyfriend. Ember abhorred those iconic buckteeth of his and that ridiculous pink hat that couldn't cover all of his hair. Despised how Timmy had seasons of character development while she had, at the most eight episodes of character development(She refused to acknowledge those two episodes from the Forbidden Season).

Timmy had a normal life, had dreams and ambitions. She had one fucking dream: to take over the world, make it the revolution that would be televised. It wasn't even her actual dream, she just wanted a moderately successful career as a talented- keyword: talented singer and popstar. Taking over the world was some useless filler to give her a 'motive', a reason to make Ember McLain the **bad guy.** Wanting to take over the world was just another way to give Danny more development, to make Danny stronger, to make Danny the hero. Such black and white politics pissed her off.

As long Ember McLain existed, she had no chance of having a 'normal' life. A normal life didn't constitute her having to simply start a fight with other characters just so she could say hello to them. A normal life had no need for her to fumble around, cycling through scripted lines and animations just she could stand a chance of communicating with those she wanted to talk to. A normal life doesn't call for any of this extraneous bullshit.

" _Poof! Poof! POOF! POOF!"_

Ember growled. Whenever she heard Timmy in her head, Poof was sure to follow. She strums the strings again and barely managed to suppress an angry screech when the blast hit the same area she destroyed minutes ago, only serving to destroy the area even further.

Ember knew she hated Timmy, but she wasn't sure if she hated Poof more. She hated Poof for having such a loving family whereas she didn't know what her family was like, didn't know if they loved her before she died. Hell, Ember never had the chance to be alive and be with her family. Again, she hated Poof for his more expressive animations although his scripted lines were less than desired.

But if she had to be honest, she was jealous of Timmy and Poof. Jealous of everything the two had that she would never possess. Jealous of how dynamic they were and they constantly served as a reminder that she will never have that.

"You will remember my name!"

It's right then and there that Ember remembers that her, Timmy, and Poof all share a common thread: Tara Strong. She screamed, full of unbridled rage. If she hated Timmy and Poof, then Tara Strong was the anathema of the three. Tara was the reason Ember would be stuck with these lines and animations, Tara had imbued so much _liveliness_ into Timmy and Turner while Ember would be stuck with contrived lines and feeling so empty. _Tara_ _Strong_ was the reason she would forever stuck the way she was in this unforgiving hell.

But how could she forget Robbyn Kirmsse, the woman who had not only provided Ember with her singing voice but also was the reason she could sing one song(Again, she absolutely refused to acknowledge That One Song from the Forbidden Season.) Tara might have been the reason Ember was stuck in the show but Robbyn had been the reason she was stuck singing that damn song on an infinite loop.

* * *

David Carradine had died.

Clockwork is unsure how to take this. He stands in front of his time screen, his face stoic as ever. But hearing the news that his voice has died has crushed his optimism of ever getting new lines despite the fact the show had ended a little over two years ago. He supposed knowing that his actor just died cemented the reality, that their time as a show was up, that there was no more entertaining children. They're weren't stuck in a long haitus. They all had ran out of time. No more animations and no more lines.

"Now do you understand?" The pitchy voice of the Observants broke him out of his concentration. " _We're sorry for your loss, Clockwork. We are here for you."_ His employers were _**apologizing.**_ They were trying their best to help him mourn and if he had to be honest, he was touched by the fact that they had came all this way to express their condolences.

"What do you want me to do about it?" Clockwork spat out. As much he genuinely appreciated their help, he couldn't help but be angry. Damn, the grieving process sucked.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked one of the Observants. " _Let go."_

But Clockwork doesn't want to let go, he refuses to let go of Carradine. Sure, David only voiced him for three episodes but the man had grown on him in that short period of time. Clockwork can't let go, because if he did, it felt like he would be doing him a disservice, forgetting him when everyone had already forgot David or were beginning to forget him. He refused to let go because he refuses to forget. Besides what did his employers know about losing their voice actor?

The Observants never lost their voice actors so there was no way they could know. They didn't know jackshit about it, so how could they just up and demand that he let go of someone he holds so dear to him?

Still facing his screen, "That's the problem with you Observants," Mid-sentence, he changed into his child form and all the grief and anguish washes over his tiny form., overwhelming the Time Master. He wished he could be one of those people in those movies where they just lost a loved one, he wished he could properly mourn. "All you do is observe."

"That was me." An unexpected voice broke up some of the tension and the other three ghost recognized the voice belonged to Dark Danny, or as the games called him, Dan Phantom.

"What?"

"I just have to run out the clock until your entire life falls apart." Dan said from inside the thermos, " _I watched my family die too, it was horrible dealing with the grief."_ Dan is quiet again before he continues, his voice more Vlad-like than before. "All you wanted was to make the hurt go away...no more painful human emotions to drag you down. Some things, my boy, are better left unsaid."

Clockwork swung his scythe in irritation, "What do you want me to do about it?" He asked again.

"If I had an ounce of humanity…" Dan drawled, " _I wouldn't let my grief consume me. I would have learned how to handle it better."_

"Everything's fine," Clockwork said.

David Carradine is dead.

Everything is not fine.

"Everything's the way it's supposed to be." Clockwork said again, turned around to the time screen and pressed a button on his staff as he reverted to his elderly form. "Safe, sound; care to observe the door?"

The Observants glanced at each other, realizing it was futile to argue with Clockwork when his grief was too raw, and vanished.

Dan laughed suddenly, his laughter echoing around the citadel. "You promised?" He hadn't meant to laugh, yet there was no other way that he could ask. " _You aren't fine. Not by a longshot."_

"Everything's the way it's supposed to be." Clockwork repeated for the third time.

David Carradine was gone. Everything wasn't fine; for once, Clockwork wished he was the ghost of miracle cures.

* * *

The Fentons have decided to take a vacation, so they'll relive the road trip episodes minus the scripted threat of Vlad trying to kill Jack or Youngblood attempting to try drive Danny insane. It's pleasant, having a _normal_ family vacation but it's too quiet, Jack thinks to himself.

It's a family vacation, so his family should be talking, should be laughing, should be doing anything other than being stuck in this tense silence the script writers scripted them in. Gripping his hands on the steering wheel, Jack Fenton cracked his neck before bellowing out, "Beware! For I am the Box Ghost! Master of all things cardboard and square!"

He looks at his family, waiting for them to do something other than just owlishly blink at him and it seems the silence is infinite before they suddenly erupt into laughter. Jack grinned on his signature oafish grins, beaming with pride that his idea had worked. "CHiLD You have freed me, Technus, ghost master of science and electrical technology!"

To which his son playfully replied, "Oh no you don't!" It's on instinct that he moves to a fighting stance as he transformed to Phantom. "You're not going to use the technology in this lab to take over the world!"

"Have you considered tutoring?" Jack continued, his heart swelling and he swore he was on cloud nine when he heard his wife giggle from him using Technus' lines. "I am Technus, master of all things mechanical! And once I complete my construction, you will all succumb to my awesome pow-"

A canned sound effect of something's hitting Technus in Attack of the Killer Garage replicates itself and Jack rubbed his head to clear away the pain, another oafish grin coming about.

He loved the fact that he was voiced by Rob Paulsen.


End file.
